ObamaCare, British Style: Bonuses for Service Denied

01 Apr, 2010 by Dave Blount

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The beauty of capitalism is that it gives everyone an incentive to provide others with the goods and services they need. Socialism offers incentives too — but like everything on the left, they are depraved. From Airstrip One, which has already taken the plunge into the English version of ObamaCare:

Patients’ groups expressed horror at the “sick experiment” in which NHS [National Health Service] managers have agreed to pay £38 for every casualty that ambulance staff “keep out of Accident and Emergency” (A&E) departments after a 999 [their version of 911] call has been made.

That is, Big Government pays people NOT to provide the “free” services taxpayers are bled white to finance.

[S]taff at Britain’s largest ambulance service have been encouraged to maximise the organisation’s income, by securing payments for diverting patients to telephone helplines. … Another plan uncovered would see thousands of 999 calls currently classed as urgent downgraded so that callers receive telephone advice instead of an ambulance response. …

Last week, an investigation was launched at the ambulance trust piloting the scheme following the death on Thursday of a man whose case was referred for telephone advice when an ambulance should have been immediately dispatched.

You don’t like the service the State provides, what are you going to do — drive down the road to the next government? You are forced to pay for the service whether you receive it or not, so the government’s only incentive is to give you as little as possible. This is why bureaucrats have been furtively scheming to cut £billions from healthcare.

Tens of thousands of NHS workers would be sacked, hospital units closed and patients denied treatments under secret plans for £20 billion of health cuts.

The sick would be urged to stay at home and email doctors rather than visit surgeries, while procedures such as hip replacements could be scrapped.

Somehow I doubt taxpayers will be getting their money back — not when the State needs every penny to pay legions of useless bureauweenies: